Throughout treatment, the clinician should be conscientious of how they are engaging with the patient's family and should be cognizant of the message that their behavior and attitude communicates to the patient's parents about the role of the family unit throughout treatment.

The principal focus of FBT is symptom reduction through behavior modification rather than identifying the cause of the eating disorder; thus, the clinician must withhold comments that potentially pathologize the patient's family through inferring that blame for the condition's origin should be placed on a particular parent's behaviors or decisions.

Importantly, the clinician should promote the parents' sense of self-efficacy throughout the patient's treatment, and the family should be reminded that parental guilt is often not conducive to their child's recovery.